Jung on the Importance of YOU

 

“So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of modern man. … Is he conscious of the path he is treading, and what the conclusions are that must be drawn from the present world situation and his own psychic situation? … And finally, does the individual know that he is the makeweight that tips the scales?”

                                                                                                Jung (1956)[1]

 

“Each individual is a new experiment of life in her ever-changing moods, and an attempt at a new solution or new adaptation. …”

                                                                                                Jung (1924)[2]

 

“Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual,…”

                                                                                                Jung (1956)[3]

 

“The change must begin with one individual; it might be any one of us.”

                                                                                                Jung (1961)[4]

 

            Recently, on one of my rare days off, while relaxing in a beach chair, I overheard a conversation wafting downwind. A group of women were discussing the flood that had recently devastated many parts of Vermont. My ears perked up when I heard one voice lament that she was just one person, so what could she do about global warming? I resisted the temptation to try to follow the wind to the speaker, and decided instead to write this essay.

            As the quotes above indicate, Jung recognized the dire condition of the world[5] (which has become much worse since his death in 1961) and saw the remedies not in governments or non-governmental organizations, but in us–individual persons, Nature’s “new experiment of life,” who might come up with a “new solution or new adaptation.” In this essay, I am going to elaborate Jung’s stress on the individual in the context of some of our major contemporary challenges.

 

Becoming Conscious

            Given our emphasis on Extraversion with its tendency to ignore the inner life,[6] few people in our society would put becoming conscious as a challenge, much less the major challenge we now face. But Jung had a very different value system, and recognized that consciousness is a precondition of being.[7] Although we are unaware of it, each of us is “nourished by the gradual awakening of consciousness during childhood.”[8] Rather than nurture this budding consciousness and work to create more consciousness,[9] most people “are incredibly eager to be rid of themselves,”[10]as they run “after strange gods whenever occasion offers.”[11] These “gods” take many forms–workaholism, binge-watching streaming shows, chasing the latest sale at Costco, seizing the itch to get on a warm beach somewhere in the dead of a northern winter, following the crowd on political issues.

 

Critical Thinking

            In these times when huge numbers of people are caught up in fantasies and delusions,[12] it is imperative that we remain grounded, rational, and in touch with reality. Just as we avoid “junk food” to maintain good health, so we must avoid consuming “junk media”[13] to avoid getting sucked into the rabbit holes produced by media moguls more concerned to make money than to support the health of our civic polity.[14]

            Jung knew that our “independence of mind [is] a most precious quality that should on no account be injured.”[15]But so often it is: “The mass crushes out the insight and reflection”[16] that we have as individuals, and “the bigger the crowd the more negligible the individual becomes.”[17] It takes grit and determination to apply logic to rumors, to question dubious claims, to challenge fantastic statements, to seek solid facts and stay true to our own values. This is even more challenging if most of our circle of family and friends are unconscious[18] and immersed in the destructive “need, greed and speed”[19] values of modern society.

 

Shopping

            Another challenge we all face as individuals arises from the fact that our society conflates “need” with “want.” We feel we need a cell phone, the latest computer, the same bag some celebrity carried to an awards ceremony, the gizmo that everyone is talking about.

            I first wrote about the phenomenon of “consumeritis” nearly 50 years ago,[20] and this cultural disease of “buy,buy,buy” has only intensified since then. Indiscriminate consumption is destroying the planet, both in the manufacturing processes and in the final disposal problems,[21] but the puer nature[22] of our culture finds it hard to delay gratification, and so many of our purchases are unconscious: we buy because it’s on sale, it’s what everyone else is raving about, it’s what the neighbors up the hill just got–all “other-directed,”[23] unconscious promptings.

            When we venture out to the store, we must be mindful of Jung’s warning that we all tend to be “carried by society and to that extent [are] relieved of [our] individual responsibility.”[24] It requires a heightened awareness of our individual values and needs to stand against the “wants” of our wasteful culture, and to remain mindful of our responsibility to support our local community by “buying local.”[25]

 

Supporting Local Community

            Jung saw an inverse connection between morality and the size of a community: the bigger the locale, “the greater the aggregation of individuals, the more the individual factors are blotted out, and with them morality,…”.[26] We need to be conscious as individuals not only about what we buy, but also where we spend our money. When we get our food from the local farmer’s market, or our books from the local bookstore, we are fostering variety in our town, getting fresher produce, and supporting with our money the social and cultural activities provided by these businesses.[27] By contrast, the more we patronize the big box retailers, the Amazons and Costcos, the more our money leaves our local businesses and the more we are complicit in degrading the environment, with all the shipping by plane, train and truck.[28]

 

Global Warming

            This contemporary issue was what the women were discussing in the conversation I overheard that sparked this essay. Floods, wildfires, rising sea levels, crop devastations from extreme heat–even the malfunction of cell phone batteries–are some of the effects of climate change. It is real; it is worsening; and it impacting the lives of everyone on Earth. Jung makes it clear that “Nobody can afford to look around and to wait for somebody else to do what he is loath to do himself.”[29] We must not succumb to the pernicious idea expressed by the woman I overheard: every individual matters and some of the changes needed are things each one of us can do.

            In 2017 an international coalition of researchers, professionals and scientists came together to formulate and describe a set of solutions to the global climate crises. They published their findings in Drawdown,[30] a readily accessible paperback that lists 80 ways right then that the world could undertake to address the crisis, 25 of these actions that individuals can take.

            Some personal actions look to the future in terms of overpopulation (which was a concern of Jung, the far-seeing futurist):[31] practice contraception and limit the size of your family.[32]

            Others of these actions require monetary investment, e.g. putting solar panels on your roof or property, planting trees, installing a heat pump, driving an electric vehicle, installing or upgrading your home’s insulation, using solar power to heat your water, installing a smart thermostat, and using an electric bicycle to get around.[33]

            Others don’t require lots of money, and can even save you money, e.g. reducing food waste, eating a plant-rich diet (less meat), using LED lighting in your home, reducing your use of water, reducing your driving (of a gas/diesel car), walking or biking, recycling your household refuse, composting, choosing recycled paper when you buy paper goods, practicing ridesharing and, most of all, avoiding the use of airplanes.[34]

            Nine years before the Drawdown report I planted 14 trees on my property, kept all the forest in my back lot, installed 12 solar panels, bought a Prius and now drive less than 2,500 miles a year. I use LED lights, recycle my paper and recyclables, eat primarily vegetables, chose my property knowing I would want to walk to everything, and I avoid flying, driving long distances, and use Zoom now to teach all my Jungian Center courses. The point? Jung answers: “… our personal choices add up to big implications for humanity as a whole.”[35] The individual person can take concrete, positive actions to help mitigate climate change, and we must not feel that, as individuals, we don’t matter.

            Each of us can also be an advocate for the Earth: advocate for walkable cities; pressure your local officials to build more parks, sidewalks, and design schemes to encourage walking; support the installation of bicycle infrastructure; use trains, buses and trolleys where these exist; and  support changes to building codes to permit innovations like “green roofs.”[36] Which brings up another key way every one of us matters.

 

Voting

            Besides advocacy and voting on the local level, where we may deal with officials we know personally about issues literally in our backyards, we can do our civic duty by participating in state and federal elections as conscientious citizens. On these wider levels it might be tempting to imagine our single vote does not really count, but not so! Our votes are tallied in precincts, and these results are added to county totals, which then comprise the results of a state’s race. In some recent elections, the results were so close that a recount was required. The recount process involves a granular analysis of each precinct’s results, and such close analyses show us how a single vote in several precincts might turn an election. For example, Al Franken defeated Norm Coleman by just 312 votes in the 2008 Minnesota Senate race.[37]

            Your vote can have national and even international repercussions. Why? Because the United States is a major player on the international scene and, as the United States slides more deeply into “anocracy.,”[38] individuals’ voting is now more important than ever,

            It comes as a surprise to many to learn that, in the assessment of political scientists and watchdog organizations,[39] the United States is no longer considered a democracy. Thanks to gerrymandering and intentional efforts on the part of the Republican party to restrict the franchise (e.g. by closing polling places, creating multiple tests and requirements for voting, voter intimidation during elections, etc.),[40] the U.S. is now, for the first time in 200 years, considered an “anocracy,” a precarious condition in between democracy and autocracy.[41] Besides becoming informed citizens about this fraught status, every one of us must vote and also advocate for a restoration of voting rights for all, and an end to discriminatory gerrymandering practices.

            Some students to whom I mentioned the importance of voting noted how the Electoral College system hampers the democratic process (where a winner of the popular vote loses in the Electoral  College), but this can be changed simply by requiring all the electors to follow the figures of the popular vote.[42] But such changes will happen only with concerned citizens’ advocacy for it. Jung warns us not to feel “overwhelmed by the sense of [our] own… impotence,”[43]lest we find ourselves “already on the road to State slavery…”.[44] The restoration of our democracy from its current anocratic condition is up to us–each one of us–when we go to the polls and vote.

 

Conclusion

            YOU matter. Where you shop, what you buy, what you read, what channels you watch on television, where you spend your money, what you eat, what machine you use to get around, where you put your garbage, whom you vote for–in all these ways and more YOU are a key to our future. Your life and the choices you make matter in this critical time. As Jung reminds us, YOU are “the makeweight that tips the scales.”[45]

Bibliography

Andersen, Kurt (2017), Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire. New York: Random House.

Anderson, Sonja (2023), “New Yorkers, Just Go to the Store and Buy Your Toothpaste,” The New York Times (November 5, 2023), 10SR.

Edinger, Edward (1984), The Creation of Consciousness: Jung’s Myth for Modern Man. Toronto: Inner City Press.

Fisher, Max (2022), The Chaos Machine. New York: Little, Brown & Company.

Haass, Richard (2023), The Bill of Obligations. New York: Penguin Books.

Hawken, Paul ed. (2017), Drawdown. New York: Penguin Books.

Hopkins, Rob (2013), The Power of Just Doing Stuff. Cambridge UK: Transition Books.

Keirsey, David & Marilyn Bates (1984), Please Understand Me. Del Mar CA: Prometheus Nemesis Books.

Klein, Ezra (2020), Why We’re Polarized. New York: Avid Reader Press.

Mehrtens, Susan & Charles Juzek eds. (1974), Earthkeeping: Readings in Human Ecology. Pacific Grove CA: The Boxwood Press.

Mipham, Sakyong (2003), Turning the Mind into an Ally. New York: Riverhead Books.

Riesman, David, Nathan Glazer & Reuel Denney (1955), The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character. Garden City NY: Doubleday & Co.

Spears, Dean (2023), “The World’s Population May Peak in Your Lifetime,” The New York Times (September 24, 2023), 10SR.

Walter, Barbara (2022), How Civil Wars Start. New York: Crown Publishers.

[1] Collected Works 10 ¶586.Hereafter Collected Works will be abbreviated CW.

[2] CW 17 ¶173.

[3] CW 10 ¶535.

[4] CW 18 ¶599.

[5] “Letter to Adolf Keller,” 25 February 1955; Letters, II, 229.

[6] Keirsey & Bates (1984), 14.

[7] CW 10 ¶528; italics in the original.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Jung (1965), 326; cf. Edinger (1984), 17-33.

[10] CW 17 ¶173.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Kurt Andersen provides an in-depth analysis, with hundreds of examples, in Andersen (2017).

[13] E.g. Fox News, Newsmax, Infowars; for an excellent graphic distinguishing the “junk media” from the reliable forms, go to https://adfontesmedia.com, which produces an interactive media bias chart.

[14] Fisher (2022) describes numerous examples of this; see, especially, 180-266.

[15] CW 17 ¶173.

[16] CW 10 ¶489.

[17] Ibid. ¶503.

[18] CW 7 ¶240.

[19] Mipham (2003), 21.

[20] Mehrtens & Juzek (1974), 5,187, 217, 219. For a more recent discussion of our “shopping addiction,” see Anderson (2023), 10SR.

[21] To take just one example, consider the cell phone. It contains 16 “rare earth” elements, which “are found in many areas across the world in low concentrations.” These elements are crucial to the operation of phones, but the mining of them creates disturbing environmental impacts: Because the concentration of these elements is low, the most economicially realistic way to extract them is via open pit mining. This type of mining destroys “huge swaths of natural habitats, and causes air and water pollution, threatening the health of nearby communities.” Besides the “rare earth” elements, the manufacture of a cell phone requires copper, silver, palladium, aluminum, platinum, tungsten, tin, lead, gold, magnesium, lithin, silica, and potassium–all of which require mining, and all of which exist in finite supply. https://www.matconlist.com/2018/10/what-materials-are-smartphones-made-of.html

[22] Puer is Latin for “child,” and a person with a puer nature is like a child, i.e. playful, imaginative, into fantasy, credulous and more irresponsible than the senex type of personality. See Andersen (2017) for multiple examples of the American puer.

[23] Riesman et al. (1955), 34-38.

[24] CW 7 ¶240.

[25] Hopkins (2013), 27.

[26] CW 7 ¶240.

[27] Hopkins (2013), 27-29.

[28] Ibid., 29.

[29] CW 18 ¶599.

[30] Hawken (2017).

[31] CW 10 ¶537.

[32] Hawken (2017), 78.

[33] Ibid., 10, 58, 94, 142, 101, 36, 98, 146 respectively.

[34] Ibid., 42, 38, 92, 170, 136, 88, 158, 62, 166, 144, 150, respectively.

[35] Spears (2023), 10SR. Dean Spears is an economist at the Population Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin.

[36] Ibid., 86, 88, 156, 90-91, respectively.

[37] Haas (2023), 55.

[38] Walter (2022), 11-12, defines “anocracy” as the state of a nation’s government in a middle zone between democracy and autocracy; a liminal condition that is dangerous, as it is in this zone that most civil wars occur. The term was coined by Northwestern University professor Ted Robert Gurr.

[39] E.g. Gurr, Barbara Walter, and the Polity Project, Center for Systemic Peace; Walter, 12-13, 136.

[40] Ibid., 146.

[41] Ibid., 11.

[42] Klein (2020), 253.

[43] CW 10 ¶503.

[44] Ibid.

[45] Ibid. ¶586.